The Wanderers WIP

[Link6415]

GREAT NEWS!

 

I'm done with graphics (although I'll make a new font soon, for now I'm using ATASCII), and more importantly, THE LEVEL GENERATOR IS COMPLETE! Yay!

 

It's not much, but I'm proud of it.

 

It took around 120 lines of code and only takes 32 seconds to generate a level. I'll have some pics up later today, but that's all for now.

[Link6415]

Other than the font, I won't be changing the graphics anymore, though I have to make sprites for monsters still. Here's a mockup with filters:

 

 

Edited April 18, 2016 by Link6415

[OmegaPrime]

Looking good can't wait to see some other assets.

[carlsson]

Interesting patterns/colours. Which program do you use to create mock-ups? Also, is that a map mode or have you shrunk the rooms to that size?

Edited April 18, 2016 by carlsson

[Link6415]

Interesting patterns/colours. Which program do you use to create mock-ups? Also, is that a map mode or have you shrunk the rooms to that size?

I use Pixcen, a c64 bitmap editor for the mockups. First I take a screenshot in VICE, then I import it in Pixcen, and then I set Pixcen to "unrestricted" mode (which removes cell color restraints) to draw the sprites. And technically yes, I shrunk the rooms, but it's like Telengard in that you move between rooms, but not in them, so it doesn't effect gameplay too much. And you are told the room's contents and shown sprites that represent them.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Link6415

[Link6415]

Other than the font, I won't be changing the graphics anymore

I lied!

I decided that the graphics I had were (while nice and simple) a bit bland. This has more detail and color, and looks much better. It's supposed to be a hedge maze, I was inspired by the box art for "Adventure" on the 2600. I'll still have to do a new font in the future.

[carlsson]

Hm, are you using extended colour mode with 64 definable characters? It looks like the outer border is yellow/green and then the inner room is red with a black outline, which in my book requires a such mode. You might get away with multicolour mode too, but at half the horizontal resolution. Will you use raster timing to switch graphics mode at the bottom for the text display?

 

Or... well, I sincerely hope you're not doing this in hires plotting mode.

[Link6415]

are you using extended colour mode

Yes

[OmegaPrime]

Any update on this project Link?

[Link6415]

I finished the actual game part (level generation, monster encounters, etc.) but found that it wasn't very hard or fun. Way too simple. I decided not to even bother with the scrolling text box, title screen, music, or anything beyond the basic framework until I could figure out a way to make it more interesting. Since I love the lo res PLOT functions and HLIN/VLIN of AppleSoft BASIC, I made my own versions for the C64. I finished that about a week ago. Just yesterday, I finished a random maze generator written in AppleSoft BASIC. I am currently working on converting the AppleSoft code to C64 code (with the help of my custom plotting routines).

 

I didn't want to post anything more until I had a demo of the maze generator up and running on the C64 with player and monster party movement plus objects (and even then, I was going to make a new thread) but those things shouldn't take to long to implement into the new version, so I may be able to show some stuff in the next few days. If anyone is interested in the maze generator (which generates an actual maze, not rooms that can branch off in random directions like my boring first version) I'd love to explain how it works, and could show you the completed AppleSoft version.

[Link6415]

Alright, here's a cool update.

 

A few days ago, I finished converting the Applesoft code to C64 BASIC/machine code mishmash. But I thought the maze looked a bit too small. Today, I finished a routine to plot individual pixels onto an artificial bitmap (which is made up of characters). After making a new version of the maze generator, I'll be able to have a much larger maze (2*2 pixel blocks as opposed to 8*8 pixel characters.)